1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to endless tape cassettes having a housing in which is received a tape wound on a stationary reel.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With a usual tape recorder for recording and reproducing video signals (hereinafter referred to as VTR) the required relative speed between tape and head is obtained by using a rotatable head. Recently, however, a so-called stationary head VTR has been proposed, in which an endless tape runs at as high a speed as several meters or more per second for recording and reproduction with a magnetic head fixed in position in the direction of the length of the tape (but capable of being shifted in the direction of the width of the tape).
This stationary head VTR has, on one hand, a merit that the head mechanism is simplified, but on the other hand a demerit that the handling of the tape tends to be intricate. This is due to the adoptation of a system, in which an endless tape wound on the reel is led out from the inner-most peripheral side of the tape roll and is taken up from the outer-most peripheral side through a tape drive mechanism including the head, a capstan and a pinch roller. In this system, a tape replacement is made either by removing the tape from the reel and providing a new tape on the reel, or by replacing the taped reel with another. In either case, the operation of replacing the tape is very troublesome, and also at the time of the replacement it is likely that the tape is touched by hand or detached from the reel and thus stained or damaged. Further, at the time of tape transportation or storage much care is also required to be taken as in the case of the tape being in an exposed state.
Under these circumstances, it is desirable that the tape in the stationary head type VTR be made available in the form of a cassette tape. To meet this demand, an endless tape receiving structure or cassette has been contemplated which is adapted to receive the endless tape in a tape receiving case or housing together with the reel and, at the time of installing this case inside the body of a tape travel device, to open a lid of the case and lead out part of the tape roll on the reel outwardly of the same, and to set the tape portion thus led out to a tape travel mechanism. In this system, however, an additional mechanism for leading out the tape from the reel (a mechanism for leading out the tape to the outside of a casing receiving the tape in an interlocked relation to the operation of drawing out a lid provided on the case) is required in particular, so that the tape receiving structure itself as a cassette is inevitably complicated and expensive. Further, the tape drive system is also complicated in construction since it requires an additional mechanism for controlling the afore-mentioned mechanism for leading out the tape. Furthermore, with this cassette the lid outwardly projects when it is pulled out, and therefore an extra space has to be provided in the tape drive system, thus imposing considerable restrictions upon the design of the tape drive system.